The Kremlin stated Wednesday that although Russia “is not party” to the ongoing battles in the Donbass region of Ukraine, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko “coincided significantly” on ways to “settle the conflict” during a morning phone conversation.

From Russia’s perspective, the roiling conflict in Ukraine between pro-government troops and rebels looks like a country at war with itself, but according to officials in Kiev, the ongoing fight is about resisting Russia’s encroachment onto their soil—on behalf of Europe.

Given the current dismal state of the European Union economy, which is now firmly under German control, one must ask why Angela Merkel and her government continue to champion austerity, seemingly against all reason.

Although the governments of several European countries weren’t exactly willing to corroborate this story, The New York Times reported Tuesday that al-Qaida has made a consistent practice of kidnapping European citizens for ransom, and it has paid off very well.

Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy argues that recent events have shown that the Jewish state has pity for only the Jews; scientists have found a possible explanation for conservative outrage over women having sex lives; meanwhile, an Ebola outbreak spread in large part due to deforestation. These discoveries and more after the jump.

The writer of the best-selling book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” that’s on everybody’s mind these days stopped by “The Colbert Report” on Monday for a reckoning with the faux-conservative host.

“The U.S. press and newscasts make it appear that Europeans have voted against poor immigrants and foreigners,” economist Michael Hudson adds to an interview he had done with The Real News Network. “What they voted against [was] the super-rich, the oligarchy.”

Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and threat to Ukraine are causing damage he perhaps did not anticipate: disorientation of the United States and profound division in Europe, especially in Germany, and in NATO. A real risk of war.

Wes Anderson’s characteristically whimsical “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” set in a fictitious central European nation succumbing to 1930s fascism, reflects contemporary audiences’ “half-embarrassed, half-guilty wish to know something of the great convulsions of the past,” film critic Stuart Klawans writes in The Nation.

The issue of rightist nationalism as a threat to the European Union and the peace of the new Europe has preoccupied Europeans since 1945, when the predecessors of the EU—the West European Union and then the Coal and Steel Community—were created to assure that Nazism or some totalitarian counterpart would not again rise in Europe.

Washington says, “punishment” of Vladimir Putin and his Russian government. I presume that it is not by way of war, although that risk exists as both sides demonstrate their determination and self-righteousness.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The CodePink co-founder tells us why Egypt thinks she’s a threat to national security. Also: Making sense of Ukraine, Uganda bans homosexuality, and the Advocate’s Matthew Breen on AIDS breakthroughs.

This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Code Pink co-founder tells us why Egypt thinks she’s a threat to national security. Also: Making sense of Ukraine, Uganda bans homosexuality, and the Advocate’s Matthew Breen on AIDS breakthroughs.

Neo-Nazis have formed a large part of the protesting population in Ukraine, and the U.S. may be supporting them; somehow the large majority of Wikipedia articles have been written about Western and Southern Europe; meanwhile, has a new NSA leaker emerged? These discoveries and more after the jump.

The French have been shaken by François Hollande’s curt, 18-word termination of his relationship with “the woman of my life.” The whole matter has taken a significant political turn with the unexpected and noisy anti-Hollande street demonstration that followed the president’s statement. This protest was unanticipated and heterogeneous in composition and turned seriously violent.

Clashes between the Ukrainian government and demonstrators continued Friday, despite President Viktor Yanukovych offering to give a little ground. The government’s creative use of text messaging earlier in the week, not to mention violence, had something to do with the ongoing calls for regime change.